


Drunkenness is a Kind of Poisonous Disease

by johnny cade (johnnycake)



Series: Switchblades and Leather [14]
Category: The Outsiders (1983), The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Alcohol, Gen, abuse mention, csa mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-13 22:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14757858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnnycake/pseuds/johnny%20cade
Summary: Johnny gets drunk and gets into the first and only fight he ever instigates.





	Drunkenness is a Kind of Poisonous Disease

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Just Like Him](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13607697) by [dyingpoet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dyingpoet/pseuds/dyingpoet). 



> remember how i referenced a time johnny was found in the vacant lot with a bloody nose in my last one shot?? remember?? cause HERE YA GO!!! also saying that other fic was an inspiration for this one cause it was.

Never before in his life had Johnny felt this way. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He had wanted to hurt plenty of times before. But he’d never before wanted to get so drunk he couldn’t stand and he’d never before wanted to seek out someone else to hurt him rather than just doing it himself.

The first thing he did was go to the nearest liquor store with five bucks he’d found on the sidewalk the day before and buy the smallest bottle of vodka they had. It was the only one he could afford. Later, he would wonder why the cashier never asked for his ID, nor seemed concerned that he didn’t have one when he looked at least two years younger than he actually was.

He left the liquor store with the vodka bottle in a paper bag, but he took it out and twisted off the cap as soon as the door swung shut behind him and took a shot. The liquid burned going down and made him choke and cough. He took two more shots before he replaced the cap and, keeping ahold of the neck of the bottle, headed towards town.

He didn’t know exactly what he was planning on doing until he got there and saw a bright red Cadillac parked on the curb and a group of four Socs hanging around it. The shine on it was such that he could see the Socs reflected in the body of the car. The rims on the wheels looked more like mirrors and the fancy car logo on the front looked handmade.

Johnny smirked, knowing exactly what he was going to do immediately.

Ever since he was a child, Johnny had an uncanny ability to move unseen. No one, including him, knew how he did it. He thought it was just because he was smaller and quieter than most people and therefore escaped their notice. However, tonight as he moved towards the side of the road, gathering up a handful of rocks, he knew that his ability to move stealthily didn’t come from instinct alone. He knew how to do it and he hated attention, so most of the time he did it without realizing it.

Later, he would wonder if he would’ve recognized that if he hadn’t been drinking.

He straightened slowly, one rock clutched in one fist, all the rest clutched in the other. The Socs weren’t even looking at him. They were laughing about something else. Johnny raised the fist clutching the single rock.They wouldn’t ever know what hit them.

 _You don’t have_ _to do this,_ a small voice whispered in the back of his mind.

He hesitated.

_You could go home, do something else._

But a stronger more persistent voice replied, _You want to get the shit beaten out of you? Well, here’s how you do it. Or are you going to be a coward? Like always?_

Johnny gritted his teeth. The second voice was right. And he threw the rock.

The first one hit the handmade logo right on the front of the car, but didn’t catch the Socs attention. The next one hit the center of the hood and caught all of their attentions at once. Johnny threw two more just for good measure. One hit the windshield and cracked it and the other bounced harmlessly into the car’s interior.

But the cracked windshield was what did it. They’d been coming for him before, but once the windshield cracked, they all ran at him.

Instincts kicked in and Johnny started to run, but he only got to the corner before the Socs caught up with him. A part of him was terrified he would be beaten as badly as he had been the night the gang had found him in the vacant lot. Another part of him was afraid they’d just kill him. And yet another part of him reminded him as he fell to the ground, cracking his head so hard on the concrete he saw stars, that this was what he’d wanted and complaining about it now was ridiculous.

The Socs pulled him up off the sidewalk to hide him across the face so hard his nose started bleeding. Another hit him in the eye and he knew immediately his eye would black in the morning. Someone hit him in the stomach, cracking one of his ribs and he grimaced. Another split his lip when they hit him in the face again.

Johnny felt himself laugh at the pain and that earned him another punch to the face.

He wasn’t really sure what eventually made the Socs stop. His head was spinning so fast from the pain and the alcohol that he wasn’t really aware of what was happening until he realized he was lying on the ground alone, the red Cadillac gone from the side of the street. Strangely enough, they’d left behind the bottle of vodka, still in its paper bag by the side of the road. Johnny didn’t remember putting it down or even carrying it all the way here for that matter.

Slowly and stiffly, Johnny pushed himself up into a sitting position, the world still reeling as he did so. He didn’t think he’d had that much vodka, but he was a lightweight and two shots for him was like four or five shots for someone else. Still, he pulled himself to his feet, using the streetlamp right next to him and staggered across the sidewalk to the vodka bottle. He had to use the brick wall of the building next to him to bend over to pick it up and once he did, he twisted open the cap to take another shot, not really caring if he was already pretty drunk.

Johnny didn’t drink. Not really. The gang had decided after what had happened the last time he drank that he shouldn’t ever drink again and he had, for the most part, agreed. He didn’t like how it made him feel and he always ended up vomiting because he just couldn’t keep up with everyone else. But something had snapped in him tonight and for whatever reason, getting drunk had sounded like the best idea. It had sounded like the _only_ idea. It _still_ sounded like the only idea. Which was why he was trying to stay drunk.

He went back the way he’d come, wandering through town until he reached the neighborhoods and then his own street. As he crossed the train tracks that separated the west side from the east side, he stared down them towards the houses where the Socs lived and wondered, not for the first time, what life was like over there, if it really was as perfect as they all thought it was.

 _Probably not,_ he thought to himself. Everywhere had its own set of problems. The Socs lives were no different. It had always seemed to him that they hated them because the Socs were destined to grow up to be as emotionless and devoid of passion as their parents and that sounded like a grim future no matter where you stood in their feud. At least in Johnny’s opinion. The reason the Socs then hated the greasers was because they didn’t have that future laid out for them. They could become anything, provided they pulled themselves out of the impoverished life they’d been born into. It didn’t make anything the Socs did right, but it did explain it. And for Johnny that was enough to empathize.

The vacant lot was lit by only one streetlight on the corner near Johnny’s house. He grimaced when he saw the dark brown house, hidden mostly in stark shadow, thinking of everything that had happened there and everything that he knew would happen again. He flinched, closing his eyes briefly without realizing it as memories flooded his mind. He turned away from the house and walked all the way to the back of the lot where the light from the streetlamp didn’t reach at all. He opened the bottle of vodka again and took another shot, pacing by the fence that marked the back of the lot, a million thoughts running through his head as he did so.

_All your fault. Everything. All your fault._

_Worthless, worthless, worthless, worthless…_

_Selfish, spoiled, ungrateful little boy._

_Stupid, ugly, stupid, fat, stupid, stupid, stupid, loser, stupid, lost._

He wasn’t sure how long he was there doing that, pacing by the fence, his mind racing, but eventually he realized there were several shapes headed towards him. He didn’t look at them as they approached. He didn’t even know how many of them there were. He took another shot of vodka and hoped if it were the Socs come back to hurt him, he’d be drunk enough he wouldn’t feel most of it.

“Johnnycake?”

He drew his brows together. _That_ voice was familiar.

He turned towards the figures and saw now that it was the gang. Dally, Darry, Soda, and Steve. He squinted, stumbling to one side. Where had they come from? How had they known he was here? Why did they all look so scared?

It was Soda who had spoken, who was closest to him. His eyes were wide with concern and he was reaching out a tentative hand to Johnny as though he were a scared and wounded animal that might lash out at any moment. Distantly, Johnny recognized that they had never seen him like this before. More closely he wondered why it was scaring them so bad. They’d seen Dally and Two-Bit like this plenty of times. What made him different?

“Hey, why don’t you give me the bottle?” Soda was saying. Johnny realized now that was what his hand was reaching towards.

Johnny was frowning and opening his mouth to say _Fuck no_ when Steve cut him off.

“Shit, Johnny, is that blood? Did you have a bloody nose?”

“He’s got a black eye too,” Darry replied. His voice was strangely calm, but there was something in his eyes that said the opposite and his hands were clenched into fists. Vaguely, Johnny realized that the only other time he’d seen Darry like this was after Johnny had tried to kill himself three years ago when Dally had been in New York.

“I ain’t givin’ up my booze,” Johnny said, though he wasn’t sure exactly how it came out. His words were slurring and he didn’t know if he were still understandable.

However, he must have been because Soda replied, “You’ve had a lot, Johnnycake. You’re stumblin’ around and you can’t talk right. You gotta stop or you’re gonna get sick, remember?”

In response, Johnny frowned, twisted off the cap, and brought the bottle to his lips to take another sip, but Dally lunged forward and wrested it from his grasp. Johnny was so stunned that he pushed Dally in the chest, knocking him backwards. It wasn’t until Dally tripped over a large stick on the ground and fell that Johnny realized what he’d done and he felt tears welling in his eyes. He looked away, not wanting the other boys to see, but he couldn’t stop them from falling. Not even when he dug his nails so deep into his palms he drew blood.

“Hey, Johnny, it’s okay, man,” Dally was staying. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched him stand, leaving the bottle on the ground as he walked slowly towards him. “I ain’t mad at’cha.”

 _You should be,_ Johnny thought, but he didn’t say it. He wasn’t sure it would come out right.

“C’mon, why don’t you come back to our place and crash on the couch?” Soda was saying softly. He was still treating him like a wounded animal and he wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about that. “I’ll get you some real warm blankets and when I go to work in the mornin’ you can have my bed.”

Soda’s kindness just made Johnny cry harder. He didn’t know what to do with the affection the gang gave him. His family had never given it to him and he’d come to believe he deserved to be beaten and molested by his father, beaten and yelled at by his mother. Having someone give him true love, true kindness, with no strings attached, no guilt trips, no taking it back later, no nothing...he didn’t know what to do with it except cry.

The Curtis house was down the street from Johnny’s house. He didn’t look at his house this time as they passed it, choosing instead to keep his head down. As they passed under the streetlight, he realized someone had draped their coat over him. It took him until they were almost to the Curtis house to realize that it was Dally’s.

Darry decided to take the couch, giving Johnny his bed even after Johnny protested.

“You gotta get up for work tomorrow,” he said softly. “I ain’t got nothin’ to do. You gotta get a good sleep, so you won’t get hurt at work.” He knew Darry roofed houses and he also knew that Ponyboy and Sodapop worried about him enough as it was.

But Darry shook his head, saying, “It wouldn’t be the first time I went to work after sleepin’ on the couch cause of this or that.” He didn’t say it, but the unspoken, _We all know you ain’t really got a place to sleep and be comfortable_ , was left hanging in the air between them.

Still Johnny thanked Darry repeatedly as he changed out of his clothes into the overlarge t-shirt Darry gave him to use as pajamas for the night. He crawled into bed and left the door barely open, just enough that he could hear the voices from the living room, see the light from the hall, and know that he was not alone.

“What d’you think happened to him?” he heard Steve ask softly from the living room.

“Looked like he got in a fight,” Soda replied, his voice just as soft.

“Coulda been his old man,”’ Dally added, sounding bitter.

“Nah, this seemed different,” Steve said. “It looked like a Soc had hit him.”

“But why would they?” Soda asked. “They ain’t been on this side of town since they beat him up good the first time. And if they’d been around tonight, we woulda seen ‘em.”

There was a silence.

“He coulda picked the fight,” Dally said, breaking it.

“That really ain’t like Johnny, though,” Darry said, speaking for the first time.

No one said anything, but even from his bedroom, Johnny knew what they were thinking: it wasn’t like him when he was sober. They’d found him pretty off the walls drunk.

“He shouldn’t drink anymore,” Steve said softly.

No one replied, but everyone, including Johnny, drifting off in the bedroom, agreed.

**Author's Note:**

> i wanna write more one-shots, but i don’t have anymore one-shot ideas, so if Y’ALL HAVE ANY COMMENT THEM BELOW PLS I BEG OF YOU. 
> 
> also ur damn right i am gonna write the first time johnny got drunk too because we love angst in this house. 
> 
> alsoalso this is random, but i rly do love the prompts y’all give me :) they make my day every time <3 (if y'all have any dally centered ones in particular that'd be great bc my dally wants more stuff from dally's pov, but i don't have any ideas ;-;, but anything at all would be appreciated).
> 
> FINALLY, i know that i said in another fic that johnny’s house was white and that’s bc i thought it was at the time, but upon further inspection i have discovered his house is brown, so we’re changing that


End file.
